statement was supported by Gerson who defined that many prewriting techniques help writers tackle different types of technical correspondence. He also provided
some of these prewriting techniques including mind mapping, brainstorming, branching, flowcharting, outlining, storyboarding, and cubing 2003: 14.
In brief, mind mapping is one of the writing strategies used in prewriting step. According to Steel 2005, in her article on Using Mind Maps to Develop Writing,
that a mind map, or spidergram, is a strategy for making notes on a topic, prior to writing. Halen 2009 added the statement in his article on Showing the Linkages
from an Issue, Concept or Problem with Other Concepts or Issues, mind mapping is a popular brainstorming tool and learning technique of visually arranging ideas and
their interconnections. In the writer’s conclusion, mind mapping is one of the prewriting strategies enabling students to learn, especially in composition, to find a
specific topic in learners’ compositions.
B. Theoretical Framework
The research discusses on two main problems. The first is the students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing
skills and the second is the students’ suggestions on the use of mind mapping in its implementation in Writing class.
The research has a relation to the previous study by Torild Homstad and Helga Thorson who studied about writing theory and practice in second language classroom
on their technical report series. They said that, “Writing has long been considered a
“support skill” for learning grammar in foreign language instruction” Homstad Thorson, 1994: 4. Their research looked beyond traditional writing practices in
second language acquisition for new instructional possibilities. This statement shows that writing is important to second language acquisition
thus either teachers or learners should have the effective way to start writing. One of the effective ways is mind mapping. It leads the learners to build up their ideas and
arranges them into composition easily. “Teachers will provide a writing task and help them to generate vocabulary and
ideas by applying a number of strategies in class namely brainstorming, clustering, and discussion, without concern for correctness or appropriateness in the first stage of
writing.” adapted from Scott “The model of writing process”, 1996. The statement
is equal to the explanation of prewriting step that is the very first step of writing process. It means that there are still other processes or steps in writing. However, the
researcher focuses on mind mapping as one of the prewriting strategies in prewriting step.
As what Halen 2009 said on Showing the Linkages from an Issue, Concept or Problem with Other Concepts or Issues, explained in previous sub-section, the
researcher sees that mind mapping is one of the easier and more interesting strategies to use because it may has some images and colors. Mind mapping also encourages
the students to think about the ideas that should be written, and then makes the ideas visualized by drawing the images and coloring the line to relate each idea. Hence,
mind mapping also relates to metacognitive learning strategy, as what Oxford’s view,
written in previous sub-section, can be concluded that mind mapping which pushes students to have metacognitive learning strategy stimulate students being autonomous
in learning. The students are able to arrange their own ideas into composition by previously visualizing the ideas. Mind mapping refers to the metacognitive learning
strategy because it has three steps of working. They are, first, planning which refers to the students when they plan of what they are going to write and how they want to
explore deeper towards the general ideas of the composition then, the second, monitoring is when they are writing, they are able to monitor they writing by
themselves by looking at mind mapping as the guidance, the third, evaluation can be the way to recheck their writing whether all the ideas in the mind mapping have been
discussed on the composition or not. Whereas the meaning of students’ perceptions in this research refers to the
definition stated by Hardi and Heyes 1988: 85, “The basic form of perception is people’s born talent, meanwhile perceptional ability is the result of learning which is
determined by the environment”. The statement means that the perception is a way of which a man views a phenomenon based on their own experiences toward the
phenomenon. The data of students’ perceptions then are going to be gained based on the students’ experiences using mind mapping in pre-writing step.
Those theories that relate to writing skill will support this research to solve the research problems. Some theories have a close correlation to each other and also to
this research.
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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter discusses the methodology used to conduct the research. There will be six main parts, namely, research method, research respondents,
research instruments, data gathering technique, data analysis technique, and research procedures.
A. Research Method
Since the research discussed the students’ perception on using mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skill. Therefore, the method which was needed is
descriptive research. According to Ary, et. al 2002: 381 “Descriptive research studies are designed to obtain information concerning the current status of
phenomena”. To support this research, the researcher conducted survey research. The survey research would involve two major instruments in collecting data. They were
distributing questionnaires and interviewing some respondents randomly.
B. Research Respondents
The respondents of both instruments, questionnaire and interview, would be the students of English Language Study Program of Sanata Dharma University who take
the Research Paper Writing class B, E, and F in 20092010 academic year. The number of the respondents in each class was between seventeen and twenty
